More than 113,000 people entered Venice on Thursday, but only a fraction of them bought the five-euro entrance ticket per person, the mayor’s office of Venice announced on the first day of the paid entry system introduced in the city, MTI reported.
According to the office’s data, more than 113,000 people arrived in Venice during the period of paid entry from nine thirty in the morning to four in the afternoon. April 25 was a national holiday in Italy, so the number of visitors was higher than average. More than 15,000 of those entering the city bought a five-euro day ticket. The others only registered, but were exempt from the daily fee: among them were the nearly forty thousand guests who booked at least one night’s accommodation in Venice, the more than twenty thousand workers who entered the city for work, thirteen thousand students, and two thousand resident of Venice, their relatives and guests.
The municipality of Venice introduced the paid entry system on Thursday. Those entering the city must register on the specially created internet portal and exchange an entrance ticket. It is an experimental system that aims to alleviate the burden of mass tourism invading the city.
Registration and ticket exchange are checked at seven gates, including the airport and the vaporetto ferry station in the square in front of the Santa Lucia train station. Ticket machines were also set up there. On Thursday, 14,000 people were checked and no violators were found, the mayor’s office said.
Luigi Brugnoli the mayor stated that in Venice, nothing had been done before to regulate tourism, and “we thought it was necessary to take action”. He stated that he is aware that many people are afraid of the novelty, but the goal is to improve the quality of tourism. “Currently, we spend more money on the maintenance of the city than we have income,” he insisted, reminding that 20 million visitors come to Venice a year, but most of them only stay in the city from morning to night.
The mandatory paid entry from the age of 14 will be valid for another twenty-eight days until mid-July. The system will be valid from Friday until May 5 and then on all weekends. At the end of the pilot phase, it will be decided whether it will be introduced permanently, as well as whether the price of the €5 daily ticket will be raised.
The number of people born in Venice or with permanent residence in the city is 270,000: they can enter the city without registration, MTI wrote.
